Re: Arrastra Creek

A salon quality image!

OK, I'll admit that this image just blew me away but I certainly wasn't expecting what I saw when I clicked on your website link! Outstanding!

I certainly hope you'll be willing to share some of the techniques you used to get this image. I'd be very interested to know how you setup to get this shot. If you are willing to share your thoughts on how you locate a composition like this that would be great as well!

Re: Arrastra Creek

Originally Posted by FrankMi

A salon quality image!

OK, I'll admit that this image just blew me away but I certainly wasn't expecting what I saw when I clicked on your website link! Outstanding!

I certainly hope you'll be willing to share some of the techniques you used to get this image. I'd be very interested to know how you setup to get this shot. If you are willing to share your thoughts on how you locate a composition like this that would be great as well!

Thanks for your interest and kind words, I'll do my best to explain the shot.

I have been working all week to capture long exposures using the Lee Big Stopper (10 stop ND filter). I was looking for colorful rocks with water moving through and around them. The Lee Big Stopper Does magical things some times when I take these types of images. They (images) end up looking very different from what I saw standing there. We actually live very near the wilderness, so we can be out and alone in about 5 minutes. We left the house late yesterday afternoon and headed up a local road. The road was dusty so I wanted to get away from the road a little in case another truck drove by (dust on camera – yikes). I think about the shots at home before I leave the house, so I kind of have a vision of what I am looking for before I even get to the field.

We drove by several streams, but they were either not colorful enough or too deep for what I was looking for. Finally, we found a spot off the road that seemed to match what I was seeing in my vision of the shot. We mounted the camera on the tripod and hiked up to the spot. On the way, I found the red leaves and also carried them along.

When we got there, composed the shot (again as I had seen it in my mind) and added the leaf on the rock. Backed off and used auto focus to ensure sharpness (then turned it to manual focus to be sure it didn’t change). I then added the Coral Filter and the Big Stopper. I set the TC-80N3 to 3 minutes, closed the eyepiece shutter lever to keep light out, released the shutter and waited. The image came back black. I upped the time by 30 seconds and tried again… same thing. I did this three or four times and finally realized I was running out of time and light.

Here is a recent example of the big stopper. Water was rushing around the rock, but because of the time the shutter was open – it almost looks like a pool.

I ended up removing the Big Stopper due to darkness quickly taking over and replaced it with a Lee 4x4 Pro Glass .9 ND. I shot several images in Manual mode starting at f5.6 and ending at about f18. This particular image was shot at f8/ISO 100/75 seconds. Once home, minor adjustments in Photoshop, minor cropping off top and right. Added the tag and was done.

Re: Arrastra Creek

Hi J,
I looked at your picture and thought it was a great shot. I then clicked onto your link and I know Donald doesn't like what I'm going to say next, but your web site made me say it "WOW". In fact I'll say it again, "WOW".
I'm not sure if I'm inspired to try and get as good as you or just give up.
I wouldn't dream of trying to offer C&C on pictures of this quality, thank you for sharing.

Re: Arrastra Creek

Thank you so very much Jamie. That kind of process detail is really helpful in both finding a composition that is worthwhile and in understanding what it takes to capture the essence of what you are trying to accomplish. As I expected, both the composition and the camera setup were well thought out prior to picking up the camera and heading out to get the shot.

The final results dramatically show the care taken in preparing to press the shutter!
Thank you for taking the time and effort to enlighten us. I certainly appreciate it!

Re: Arrastra Creek

Personally I am not so keen on the second, it might be mistaken for one of those tilt/shift 'model look' images, except there's just the single central point of sharpness.

Getting back to the first, it has a very pleasing set of colours and arrangement, one other thing that struck me was how you had blurred your own copyright message, that's not a technique I had seen applied before, but it works quite well at reducing the 'distraction factor' of text in an image.

Re: Arrastra Creek

Personally I am not so keen on the second, it might be mistaken for one of those tilt/shift 'model look' images, except there's just the single central point of sharpness.

Getting back to the first, it has a very pleasing set of colours and arrangement, one other thing that struck me was how you had blurred your own copyright message, that's not a technique I had seen applied before, but it works quite well at reducing the 'distraction factor' of text in an image.

I have been working all week to capture long exposures using the Lee Big Stopper (10 stop ND filter). I was looking for colorful rocks with water moving through and around them. The Lee Big Stopper Does magical things some times when I take these types of images. They (images) end up looking very different from what I saw standing there. We actually live very near the wilderness, so we can be out and alone in about 5 minutes. We left the house late yesterday afternoon and headed up a local road. The road was dusty so I wanted to get away from the road a little in case another truck drove by (dust on camera – yikes). I think about the shots at home before I leave the house, so I kind of have a vision of what I am looking for before I even get to the field.

We drove by several streams, but they were either not colorful enough or too deep for what I was looking for. Finally, we found a spot off the road that seemed to match what I was seeing in my vision of the shot. We mounted the camera on the tripod and hiked up to the spot. On the way, I found the red leaves and also carried them along.

When we got there, composed the shot (again as I had seen it in my mind) and added the leaf on the rock. Backed off and used auto focus to ensure sharpness (then turned it to manual focus to be sure it didn’t change). I then added the Coral Filter and the Big Stopper. I set the TC-80N3 to 3 minutes, closed the eyepiece shutter lever to keep light out, released the shutter and waited. The image came back black. I upped the time by 30 seconds and tried again… same thing. I did this three or four times and finally realized I was running out of time and light.

Here is a recent example of the big stopper. Water was rushing around the rock, but because of the time the shutter was open – it almost looks like a pool.

I ended up removing the Big Stopper due to darkness quickly taking over and replaced it with a Lee 4x4 Pro Glass .9 ND. I shot several images in Manual mode starting at f5.6 and ending at about f18. This particular image was shot at f8/ISO 100/75 seconds. Once home, minor adjustments in Photoshop, minor cropping off top and right. Added the tag and was done.

Re: Arrastra Creek

Re: Arrastra Creek

@jamiej26:
Hi Jamie
I'm blown away by the photos you posted above! Thank you so much for sharing these.
I discovered one of your Arrastra Creek photos only today when I was going through The Garden Gallery photos on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater). My first reaction was "Wow, I'd love to paint that!" So I tried to find out more details, eg whose photo it was, whether it's got copyright, etc. To cut the story short, this led me to cambridgeincolour.com and found this page, and immediately joined the Forum just now. So I'm new here and I'm still finding my way around.

I also have to thank you for making me discover cambridgeincolour.com because this site seems to have a wealth of tutorials for various levels. I'm really keen to learn photography, for various reasons, but mainly to help me produce good photographs of my paintings (during work in progress and upon completion), as well as be able to take photos of subjects I'd like to paint.

Going back to your Arrastra Creek photos, I really would love to try painting them, and I'm just wondering what your terms are before I can use them. If you like you could send me a private message. Looking forward to your response.